Warren Buffett's Optimism

Good Monday morning. The stock market is having a lousy day in Europe and Asia, despite the weekend promise of the G20 to use “all policy tools – monetary, fiscal and structural” to boost the economy. The promise fell flat.

But despite short-term woes, Warren Buffett declared his faith in the U.S. economy’s long-term prospects. In his annual letter to shareholders released Saturday, the Omaha investor said: “It’s an election year, and candidates can’t stop speaking about our country’s problems (which, of course, only they can solve.) As a result of this negative drumbeat, many Americans believe that their children will not live as well as they themselves do. That view is dead wrong. The babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.”

Buffett also was also optimistic about his big investment in IBM (ibm), which has lost $2.6 billion since he made it. “We expect that the fair value of our investment in IBM common stock will recover and ultimately exceed our cost,” he said.

Meanwhile, HPE (hpe) CEO Meg Whitman blasted Chris Christie, after having been his finance co-chairman. Christie’s endorsement of Donald Trump, she said, “is an astonishing display of political opportunism. Donald Trump is unfit to be president.”